Virus Prob! RFactor won't start now...

[jrowland96]

OK, dumb me yesterday screwed up... I was looking for a ser. # (no lectures, k? lol) and I thought I had my CA virus and Pest Patrol up, but had closed them when I was running rFactor... clicked the wrong thing on one of the serial/crack sites... ouch!

Anyway, I was able to clean up most of the issues (spyware, ad stuff, trojans). Used all of the CA stuff to clean as well as norton's online scan. One small issue is that my "background" on my desktop settings, only shows up when starting up and shutting down, but once Windows is loaded, the background/wallpaper section doesn't let me change it, so I'm stuck with basic color background. I created a new user acct. and that one works fine, so it's a Local Setting I'm sure. I searched on that, and did everything I saw as a fix, and could think of on that aspect, but still no go... not a big deal, I can always move my settings over to the new acct. The only spyware/virus issue I have left is the desktop background...

More to the point, I had win updates off before I guess... so in the process of cleaning up all the trojans and spyware, I must have enabled it again, because I got a whole bunch of Windows updates to install. I still had been running SP1, but went ahead and updated to SP2 (Win XP Pro). I'm thinking it's not from the viruses, but more likely SP2, but rFactor won't start now... It takes about a minute after running the program before I get the rFactor splash screen, and then that just sits, with the CPU pegged at 100%. The application doesn't load enough to even show up under the apps section of Task Mgr. just enough for the process to start and hang. I even tried it under the new User Acct. I created and the same thing. All other apps work fine, PS, etc.

I'm really thinking my rFactor problem is more from SP2. Does it matter that I installed rFactor when running SP1, and now am running SP2? Worse case scenario is I reinstall it all, but that's a pain with all the mods, tracks, etc. I had loaded, not to mention all the config to get things the way I like.

I've read of conflicts with SP version and rFactor, but nothing definitive, and most complaints were coming from people running SP1.

[jdracerx]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=842242

thx
Joe

[jdracerx]

JR her's some more info.. I'm goign to go back a newly launched SP2 and see what this does. I'll elt you know.
Quoted elsewhere "The XP SP2 also has a much better firewall and you have to add your EXEs to the exception list to race online. All my other (F1, F1C, NASCAR Heat, NASCAR 2003, etc.) run just fine without having to put them in Compatibility mode. I see no reason not to install DirectX 9.0c and the XP SP2 update. The SP2 update can successfully un-installed if you find something you can't live without won't run. For more information on SP2, go to

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx "

Joe

[jrowland96]

Thanks Joe... Before I saw this, I went ahead and uninstalled SP2 and also my CA EZ-Armor suite. Rfactor works again. I'll try reinstalling EZ Armor later tonight, and see if RF still runs. At least I'll be able to narrow down the conflict.

Thanks again.
John

[TimCollier]

John, if your Anti-Virus has real-time virus scan, you will need to force the Anti-virus to exclude the rfactor.exe executable....

Hope it gets squared away John....